Why I Unlinked Twitter and Facebook

For the longest time I had, like most people, Tweets automatically posted to my Facebook profile. It seemed effective, post once and have it show up on both of the main social networks I utilize. Then it became a chore.

With apps like Instagram you can post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I wanted to tweet the photo, obviously, but I prefer how the photos appear on Facebook when they're direct from Instagram (rather than just a link in the FB status). Same with apps like Vine and Foursquare. I could always go to Facebook and delete the duplicate post, but that was getting tedious.

Then I realized that Facebook was just becoming a repository for what I post everywhere else. For the past couple years, not once did I post (save for photos occasionally) on Facebook directly. Everything from Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Foursquare, Flickr, Squarespace and more was just getting dumped to my Facebook Timeline so my friends not on those other social networks could see it.

So the other day I posted on Facebook, directly from the iOS Notification Center for the first time, ever. A simple, text-only status, a joke. It now has 60 "Likes."

Something else was confirmed for me when I posted this. Facebook ranks posts entered directly into its app or website higher than something thrown into it from another social network. For instance, a Tweet auto-posted to your timeline will not show in your friend's "News Feed" as much as a direct post inside Facebook.

The final thought that confirmed I should do this: Different people follow what I do on different social networks. This may seem like an over-simplfied, obvious idea, but it's true. I have friends on Facebook that aren't on any other social network. Some of my Twitter followers only see me on Twitter.

That being the case, I'm choosing to intentionally choose what I post to Facebook and what I do not. Not because I don't want people on Facebook to see everything I tweet, but they may not care about HBO's corporate website.

So if you got to this blog post because we're Facebook friends, know that what you see me post would have been posted with care, not dumped from some other service. Will I still post photos from Instagram to Facebook? Sure. Will you see everything I tweet and post? Probably not.